Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (2)

Dr Doyin Okupe, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, lit a fire under the buttocks of squirming Yoruba leaders about 10 days ago when he blamed them for engendering the marginalisation of their region. It was a beguiling view that upset this column last week. On the surface, he was right to blame the Yoruba for authoring their own woes, but a thorough examination would show the foundation of his argument to be absolutely weak. Let me quote him again: “The issue of marginalisation of the Southwest was a political misadventure and political accident brought about by the Yoruba themselves. If you would recollect, the Yoruba were supposed to produce the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which is the number four position in Nigeria. Due to political mishandling of the leadership of the Yoruba and also the sabotage of the Yoruba people by Yoruba leadership elsewhere, I am talking of the ACN now, the Yoruba leadership in the ACN conspired against the Yoruba people and allowed that position to be taken away. That was the beginning of the marginalisation. You see, when people sit down to share what is not enough and you don’t have anybody to speak for you, there is a problem.”

Of course, every political observer is sensible enough to know that Okupe was wrong to have located the genesis of Yoruba marginalisation in the controversial election of Hon Aminu Tambuwal as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Marginalisation of the Southwest, which appears orchestrated under President Goodluck Jonathan, quite clearly predated the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) support for Tambuwal or the repudiation of Hon Mulikat Akande-Adeola. Okupe’s conclusion also glossed over the political complexities that convulsed the House of Representatives’ leadership election in 2011, and unthinkingly simplified the intrigues and motivations integral to the appointment and placement of public and security officials in Nigeria. Even if Hon Mulikat had been elected Speaker, and assuming that by some deft machinations she held on to that post for as long as Tambuwal has, few would be convinced she could blunt the factors that have led to the marginalisation of the Yoruba, which factors the Yoruba themselves apparently misunderstand and mishandle.

Okupe is not the first to polemicise the Yoruba marginalisation claim, even though his observation, on the surface, appears irreproachable. The YUF and the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), both of which broadly speaking represent two contradistinctively ideological pressure groups in the Southwest, have also made similar observations. That the Southwest is deeply marginalised is, therefore, not in doubt. What is in dispute is the cause of the problem. Okupe’s arguments foundered badly when he placed the blame on the ACN’s repudiation of Hon Mulikat. The YUF took a different point of departure in identifying the factors responsible for the problem. Both by the speeches of some their leaders and the communique issued at the end of their Thursday meeting, YUF suggested that lack of unity was responsible for the region’s marginalisation. Perhaps this partly accounts for why the group has Unity embedded in its name.

But YUF also insinuated that in view of the political realignments going on in the country, Southwest politicians needed to avoid deceit in acquiescing to mergers. We can only guess what YUF meant when it talked of unity. For reasons quite unrelated to the objectives of cooperation, the Forum is generally unenthusiastic about Southwest regional integration, which would have been a solid basis for the kind of unity they envision, assuming they truly think unity is a driving force in checkmating marginalisation. And since it is only the ACN from the Southwest that is in the process of merging with other parties, the warning issued by YUF could only have been meant for that party. However, both by its warning against merger and its lack of enthusiasm for integration, the YUF unwittingly lends credence to the existence of political and, maybe, too, ideological divisions in the region, which divisions it perhaps unknowingly exacerbates, if not endorses. YUF may in fact see Yoruba unity as one in which leading Yoruba political and business elites queue behind the Forum or at least pay allegiance to Ikenne, the home of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

But as I have argued in this place many times, that kind of unity is nothing but a chimera. It was never existent even in Awolowo’s time, and it may never happen. Moreover, it is doubtful whether it is desirable. Stripped to the bones, it is hard to see how lack of unity could have fostered marginalisation if other factors were not at play, or if the national political leadership had not been deliberately manipulative, mischievous, insensitive and even incompetent. If the presidency knew its onions, and had taken to heart lessons about how conflicts predispose countries to disintegration, it would have been proactive in promoting power balance, fair play and justice among ethnic and regional groupings in the country. Must Abuja be told what grave consequences often follow deliberately orchestrated power asymmetry, especially when power is skewed for purely parochial reasons or as a punitive exercise to undermine troublesome and exuberant opposition?

Let me state it once again that there will never be unity in the Southwest whether demographically, ideologically, religiously or politically in the sense being advanced by YUF. It is enough that the Yoruba are culturally united, and as a result, and to a large extent, are generally progressive. But their progressivism does not even rise to the level of ideology, and need not, for they are a people at bottom fractious, disputatious, and made up in many disturbing parts of pockets of unprincipled and subversive individuals and entities. They are the only people capable of producing a winner in Chief MKO Abiola, and creating the counteracting forces of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s enviousness and Chief Ernest Shonekan’s betrayal. They are the only people capable of producing the insightful and gifted Awolowo, and nurturing the equally gifted but contumacious Chief Ladoke Akintola. Indeed, as the living Awolowos will recall, the opposition to their patriarch was so insidious at a point that it seemed the whole Yoruba political and judicial elite united against him. I fear that YUF is tilting at windmills. They speak of unity and warn of treacherous mergers; but they had attempted to prop up Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State as the counterforce to the prevailing political leadership in the Southwest, in spite of his formless political and developmental visions, general lack of fidelity to noble ideas and principles, and lack of foresight.

If the marginalisation of the Yoruba is to be understood, it is certainly not in terms of unity or the lack of it of the people, and not in terms of their ideologies and political affiliations. There is no part of the country that is united, whether Southeast, South-South, or even the seemingly monolithic North. Yes, the Yoruba are to a large extent responsible for the marginalisation of their region, but it is not in the sense Okupe argued, nor in the sense proposed by YUF, nor yet in the sense analysed by most commentators. After all, if we must talk of political unity, it is only Ondo State that is out of the ACN column in the Southwest. Surely no one expects that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) must merge with the ACN in the region for unity to exist or for the region to escape marginalisation.

The single most important factor in the marginalisation of the Southwest is probably the image of itself projected by the region. That image, though a little complex, is actually unflattering. Many observers have suggested, with good reason, that if Abiola had hailed from the North, and the head of state at the time of the 1993 elections had been an army general from the Southwest instead of Gen Ibrahim Babangida, not only would it have been difficult to annul the presidential election of that year, it would have been even more difficult to appoint an interim replacement. This logic may be simplistic and far-fetched, but it was easy to undermine Awolowo in 1963, easy to replace Abiola in 1993, and even easier to recruit those who connived at their replacements and colluded with the national leadership of the day to thwart their political victories.

Pursuant to this observation, I think the Southwest projects the image of an irresolute and long-suffering people in the face of external oppression and machinations. Just as they produce brilliant non-conformists and political juggernauts, they also produce enterprising reactionaries and subversive heavyweights. Babangida had on many occasions insinuated that the annulment of the 1993 presidential election was at the instance of highly placed personalities, some of them from the Southwest. He also added that we would be shocked if we knew the identities of the conspirators. Before then, as if troubled by his conscience, Obasanjo had said the heavens would not fall as a result of the 1993 poll cancellation. And for effect, he added that Abiola was not the messiah we longed for. Conspiracy and treachery are not the exclusive preserve of the Yoruba. But they have managed to turn both into an art. This was why it was not difficult to find Southwest judges to put Awolowo away and stymie his political ambitions. This was also why Obasanjo actively endorsed the infamy of 1993. And this is why Nigerian leaders always find ready accomplices among the Yoruba to subvert the aspirations and principles that have ennobled the Southwest for many generations.

But the image of group envy, group subversion and fractiousness projected by the Yoruba to the outside world is not a recent phenomenon. It predates colonialism. It manifested in Afonja’s rebellion when he took Ilorin out of the orbit and protection of the Oyo Empire in 1817; and when Ibadan for economic and political reasons attempted to address that historical anomaly, it took fellow Yoruba states working in concert to undermine that effort in the late 19th century. The talent to undermine one another is evergreen in the region. YUF, I think, sees unity in terms of its own goals and ambitions. If Mimiko resists friendship with ACN, it is not because he really fears that the progressive party’s hegemony would be destructive, but because his horizon is limited and is therefore unable to key in to wider regional economic and political aspirations. It should not surprise anyone that the much-ballyhooed Southwest regional integration effort is stalling. The region’s governors are not operating on the same wavelength, do not share the lofty vision of integration equally, do not have the capacity to clearly see the shape of the future, and cast wary glances at one another, fearing to be outdone or to be outshone.

In all this, the Yoruba, in spite of their principles, progressivism and civilisation unfortunately give the impression of a weak and exploitable people who crave for unity on the surface but are at bottom committed to undermining their own leaders, regional goals and survival. President Goodluck Jonathan simply does not feel threatened by them as he feels threatened by, say, the North. If he attempts to appoint a few more Yoruba into key offices, it will be nothing more than sheer tokenism designed for electoral gains, or a belated attempt to correct his own leadership shortcomings for having presided over such indefensible lopsidedness.

There are some countries you will think twice before attacking; and there are ethnic groups a leader will think twice before marginalising. The Yoruba do not project that deterrence, that implacable force and power that would make it unattractive for anyone to marginalise them. They are marginalised because their enemies sense their weaknesses, their isolation, their instinctive ethnocide. In their plaintive cry of marginalisation, they cut a pitiable figure of a people burdened by centuries of character flaw, of a people unable to subordinate their individual ambitions beneath their transcendental group objectives, and of a people so terribly buffeted by enemies that in the past few decades they have begun to doubt their own strengths, compromise their own foresightedness, and for the first time actually face a dilemma so cruel that their leaders have to seem to disavow their ‘Yorubanness,’ like Abiola and Obasanjo did, to win a major election.

4 thoughts on “Okupe on Southwest marginalisation (2)”

the electorate have handed the newly ascendant elite in the ACN the mantle of leadership. this sort of endorsement is all they need to fashion out a future for the SW. federal appointment never hleped any region in the past and it certainly wont help in the future so we should stop crying about marginalization.

It all boils down to one fact : We do not love ourselves as Nigerians, we do not trust ourselves otherwise why do we emphasis on regional political appointments only when we feel short changed ? Civiilised people all over the world emphasise on performance . It amazes me how some folks from the S’ west complain on trivial issues other regions merely ignored under similar circumstances and moved on.Even when the desired dividend is delivered it does not mean anything to them unless it was delivered by their own. Imagine some one calling the Super Eagles of Nigerian the Super Eagles of the Igbo in a meeting of the Youruba elders chaired by the Most Rev. Gbonigi whom I respect so much because of his fearlessness during the Abacha years simply because there were few yorubas in the team even with the AFCON trophy delivered to Nigeria after 19yrs. by the team.IT IS ERRONOUS FOR ANY GROUP ,REGION OR PEOPLE TO FEEL THAT THEY HAVE ANY SPECIAL PREROGATIVE ON ANY NATIONAL ISSUE OR TO AIR THEIR VIEWS/ BE HEARD- NIGERIA WILL NEVER MOVE FORWARD IF PEOPLE HAVE SUCH MINDSET. The truth remains that Gen. Obasanjo a yoruba man (no matter how you vilify him ) has had unfettered access to power reasonably . No other region has had such a privilagde.Please do not add to the growing list of those making Nigeria ungorvernable for Jonathan- He has enough on his hands already. Thank you the Nation Newspapers.